Noah Kahan

Vermont roots and first songs

Noah Berkenkamp Kahan was born on January 1, 1997, and grew up in Strafford, Vermont, where his family owned a tree farm. He learned guitar from his father and played an early live show with him as a child, and he began writing his own songs at about eight years old, from a river-boat ballad to angsty punk pastiches performed at school talent shows.

His mother, a bestselling author of parenting books, taught him how writing worked and how to absorb criticism, lessons Kahan has often credited in interviews. That household mix of folk records, guitars, and editorial discipline shaped the detailed, diaristic writing style he later brought to his own career.

Republic Records and the early albums

Still in high school when he started putting songs online, Kahan drew the attention of producer Joel Little and signed with Republic Records in 2017 at the age of twenty. His debut single, Young Blood, arrived that year, and the 2018 EP Hurt Somebody followed; its title track, featuring Julia Michaels, charted in markets including Australia and New Zealand.

With Little producing, Kahan recorded his debut album Busyhead in New Zealand. Released in June 2019 and led by the single False Confidence, it established the warm, lightly rasped folk-pop voice that would define his later work. A second album, I Was / I Am, arrived in September 2021, again with Little behind the boards.

Going home: Cape Elizabeth

When the COVID-19 pandemic halted touring, Kahan left New York and returned to Vermont. At a friend's house he wrote the five-track Cape Elizabeth EP in roughly a week and released it in May 2020, an acoustic ode to New England that marked a deliberate turn away from the radio-facing pop of his first records toward the specificity he wanted from his writing.

The homecoming reset his sense of place. Time spent in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville had left him feeling untethered, and writing directly about Vermont reintroduced the themes of small-town restlessness, family, and seasonal change that would organize the work immediately ahead.

Stick Season and the breakthrough

In October 2020, Kahan posted the first verse of an unfinished song on TikTok. Over the next two years he kept returning to the snippet, teasing fragments of an upcoming album, until Stick Season was already widely known before its full release on July 8, 2022. Kahan has said the title names the term older neighbors in Vermont and New Hampshire use for the gray stretch between late October and the first snow, and that he borrowed it as a metaphor for being stuck between stages of life.

The third studio album, produced by Gabe Simon, arrived on October 14, 2022. It entered the Billboard 200 at No. 14, its first appearance on that chart, and eventually climbed to No. 2. A Live Lounge cover by Olivia Rodrigo widened the song's reach, and on January 5, 2024, Stick Season rose to No. 1 on the UK Official Singles Chart, the first chart-topper of the year in Britain and the first of Kahan's career, where it stayed for seven weeks.

In February 2024 Kahan completed an official UK chart double when the single and its parent album topped the singles and albums charts in the same week. In the United States, the 2023 collaboration Dial Drunk with Post Malone reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the Stick Season album kept returning to the upper reaches of the Billboard 200 as its song cycle expanded.

Deluxe editions and Grammy recognition

Kahan extended the Stick Season era rather than closing it. The deluxe set Stick Season (We'll All Be Here Forever) arrived in June 2023 with seven additional songs and opened the door to a run of reworked duets, including Call Your Mom with Lizzy McAlpine, She Calls Me Back with Kacey Musgraves, Northern Attitude with Hozier, Everywhere, Everything with Gracie Abrams, and Homesick with Sam Fender. Stick Season (Forever) gathered those collaborations, plus new tracks, in February 2024, and the live album Live from Fenway Park followed that August.

The Recording Academy nominated Kahan for Best New Artist at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, his first nomination, and he attended the February 2024 ceremony with his mother, whom he had promised as a child that he would bring to the Grammys. A year later, Cowboys Cry Too with Kelsea Ballerini earned a nomination for Best Country Duo/Group Performance at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.

The Busyhead Project and advocacy

Kahan has spoken openly since his early releases about anxiety, depression, and the stigma around treatment, and he has built that advocacy into his professional infrastructure. Named after his 2019 debut, The Busyhead Project launched in 2023 to fund mental-health organizations and circulate resources. By September 2024 the Vermont governor's office reported that it had raised more than $2.5 million, and on September 19 of that year Governor Phil Scott proclaimed the date Noah Kahan's Busyhead Project Day, coinciding with a sold-out Vermont benefit concert whose proceeds went to local mental-health organizations.

Discussing The Great Divide in 2026, Kahan told the BBC that the pressure of following Stick Season had stalled his writing, that he had been diagnosed with OCD, and that returning to medication helped him finish evaluating the large stack of demos he had accumulated.

The Great Divide

Kahan announced The Great Divide in January 2026 and released the title track as its lead single, with Porch Light following in March. He wrote and recorded the album in settings ranging from a piano in Nashville to a pond in Guilford, Vermont, and released it on April 24, 2026. The set entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 on the chart dated May 9 with 389,000 equivalent album units and returned for a second week atop the chart.

The campaign extended into a major 2026 touring run. The title track peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, his highest chart position to date, and logged an extended run at No. 1 on Adult Alternative Airplay, while The Great Divide Tour began on June 11, 2026 in Orlando, Florida.